


The Traveller

by Eternal



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-02-03 11:03:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12747033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eternal/pseuds/Eternal
Summary: It's a relief when you get the portal fluid ingredients correct.





	The Traveller

‘…and I was thinking, you stuck down in that old hotel, and me stuck up in that –‘

‘Okay, okay,’ you say and hold up your hands as if to say, _holy fuck, shut up._ You shut down your phone and kind of chuck it into the corner – the hotel’s seedy and smells like cat hair, there’s ribbons of those fibres everywhere and the croutons you made yesterday are becoming soggy.

But in the corner of your brain, you’re thinking _wormhole_. Lime green one? You successfully made it appear, with exactly the nominal dimensional equations.

So you open your wardrobe – that’s not something that the cleaners are going to be checking for at least a month, judging by the amount of dust that’s covering the bottom and tentatively throw a peg at it. It bounces through shortly, before dissolving for good.

Should I or shouldn’t I?

You decide anyway, to stick your hand in –

And the rest of your body follows you through. There’s a boy at the other end, reading the book and fire burning a city through the window. There’s also this curtain of lines running through the sky. He looks at you up and down and says, ‘I was expecting a Summer, the last twelve were all Summers.‘ He shrugged. ‘It’s mostly Ricks, but there is usually the odd Summer that either gets very lucky on the formula, or ends up trying a portal gun—‘ His face falls into a kind of smile, but his eyes are cold ‘—and succeeding.’

‘Okay,’ you say stepping back into the newly available wall – the portal has shorted itself out now – ‘But who the fuck are you, are you some kind of alien—‘

‘Typical.’ He says. He points at the device in your hand, ‘Give me that and I’ll explain everything.’

‘Okay,’ You say and move as if it to throw it. He jerks in that direction, just a little but you’ve already twisted the dial clockwise and are shooting a new hole in the wall. You jump through. A hand slides through after you, but it retracts out before the green disappears with a snap.

Victorian chaise and the room is mostly empty except for the patterned wallpaper and the one guy staring at you with a cigar hanging out of his mouth. He’s also wearing a monocle.

‘Don’t think too hard about it,’ you suggest, it’s a phrase that _he_ repeated often, and with one trembling hand you push aside the curtains. The trees outside have grey bark and a carnal purple shade of leaves. The sky is belligerent – as in it’s got two enormous glowing yellow eyes staring back.

You close the curtains again, just as quickly.

* * *

‘Find her for me, won’t you?’ The President says to the crow like man. ‘You can’t expect me to be making campaigns, doing speeches and collecting taxes if I don’t have enough portal fluid, do you?’

‘Yes sir,’ the Rick says, but he’s pre-occupied with the phone call he made about half an hour ago and which he should have told the President about but actually hadn’t. pH, meet litmus paper. Litmus paper, meet pH. It could prove to be pretty dangerous in the long run.

But what was life, without a little danger?

* * *

The Traveller vanished three years ago and as far as everyone knows, she never returned.

 

 


End file.
